Before the translation for “Slöjd in Wood” became available last year, English speakers had limited opportunities to hear Jögge Sundqvist describe his craft in his own voice.
Jögge is a generous teacher and artist. His Instagram account is full of design inspiration and glimpses of works in progress. Here are some short videos of techniques covered in the book:
The knife grips he uses can be intimidating at first, but Jögge patiently breaks them down for the reader. These are all covered in detail, along with how to sharpen and hone your knives. See the Morakniv YouTube channel for their Swedish Knife Grip Sessions playlist for a video primer in English.
If you see only one video in the series, I recommend A Silent Session. Jögge carves a spoon blank at full speed, making design decisions on the fly and changing grips to alternate between heavy stock removal, shaping, and planing cuts. Even though I’ve taken multiple classes with him and spent many hours editing the book’s translation with him, I still marvel at the choreography between his hands, the knife and the material.
His work goes beyond woodenware and small decorative objects. He is also known for furniture and sculptures, including public displays. His latest blog post shows the process from timber to finished doorway for a theater in Sweden. If your browser doesn’t prompt you for a translation, try right clicking on the page.
The techniques described in “Slöjd in Wood” include everything you need to know to carve small-scale sculptures. Carving sculptures and figures out of basswood for my young nieces and nephews now actually seems achievable. No fairy garden is safe!
He has done extensive research into 15th– and 16th-century vernacular furniture and woodworking techniques. Here are links to short videos showing him using traditional knowledge in his current work:
Jögge is currently a judge on a Swedish craft competition show, “Mästerskaparna,” in the format of “The Great British Bake-off.” The series isn’t available to view in the United States, but you can watch the trailer on the SVT 1 website. Jögge appears briefly throughout, including all the hand modeling for carving a spoon and even a few seconds of slow-motion axe work. We’ve all taken a fast-paced project class and blown a major component of the piece. The trailer proves this is a global phenomenon.
For an excerpt from the book, see the Lost Art Press shop listing.
His directing and editing skills are on display in the documentary he made about his father, Wille Sundqvist, called “The Spoon, The Bowl, and The Knife.”
Our Moleskin Work Vests are in store and ready to ship. These vests are made from U.K. moleskin and stitched here in Cincinnati. The price is $165 plus domestic shipping.
Before you order, be sure to check out the sizing chart. Please take a moment to measure yourself so you get the correct size. These fit a little slimmer than what you’ll find in department stores. But I promise they are not cut for human twigs.
These vests are outstanding – soft, warm and hard-wearing. Thanks to Tom Bonamici who designed them and Sew Valley that stitched them.
During the last month (plus a few days), I’ve traveled more than 10,900 miles. And, truth be told, I’m feeling every one of them this evening.
The travel is great. The food, people and work – also great. I honestly enjoy it. Travel does, however, make me anxious because it puts me behind on publishing books and completing furniture commissions. So here is an anxiety-fueled update on the book projects we are working on.
I’m covering only the book projects we are actively working on. If your favorite book isn’t listed, it’s because I don’t have any news on it. Likely the book’s text is in the hands of the author – not us. So if you ask about a project that isn’t listed here, you will be referred to Paragraph 3 of this blog entry.
‘The Anarchist’s Design Book, Expanded Edition’
This book will go to the printer on Dec. 2. We’re just tying up some loose ends. Kara is doing a final copy edit. Briony is finishing up some drawings. If it goes to the printer on schedule, it will arrive in the warehouse in January. After we go to press, we’ll make the new pdf available to everyone who has purchased the book before, whether they bought it from us or from one of our distributors.
‘Kitchen Think’ (Working Title) by Nancy Hiller
Nancy’s book has been edited and is being prepared for design. We still have too many loose ends with the project to project exactly when it will be published. We are hoping for the first half of 2020.
‘Country Woodcraft’ (Updated and Expanded) by Drew Langsner
I’ve been editing this book during my travels and am about one-third of the way through the text. Drew has done a magnificent job of updating his 1978 classic. This book launched the idea of “green woodworking” into the American woodworking scene. And Drew has updated the book with what he has learned in the last 40 years…. We should have this out by June.
‘The Life & Work of John Brown’ (Working Title Only) by Christopher Williams
This book is almost completely written and in our hands. We’re just waiting on a couple critical bits to finish the job. Then I’ll begin editing the book. We hope to have this book out by August – if the writing wraps up in a timely manner.
‘Honest Labour’ by Charles Hayward
Kara plans to have her work on this book complete by the end of 2019. The book – a collection of the best “Chips From the Chisel” essays by Charles Hayward – should come together in 2020.
‘The Handcrafted Life of Dick Proenneke’ by Monroe Robinson
Kara is currently editing this book and getting things ready for the next big hurdle with the book: finding an illustrator. We hope this will be a 2020 book – fingers crossed. It really depends on how quickly the illustrator works.
‘Make a Chair From a Tree’ (Third Edition) by Jennie Alexander
I have hired Peter Follansbee to finish up the editing of this text. No one else that I know has the long history with Alexander that is necessary to get the text complete. Peter knows the chair and the author inside and out. So we are making progress here, but it is a very complex project.
I think that covers everything we have in the pipeline. For Christmas, I’m going to ask Santa for a bigger pipe.
You can now order the Lost Art Press version of “Welsh Stick Chairs” in the U.K. and Europe through Classic Hand Tools in Suffolk. Classic Hand Tools is currently taking pre-orders and will ship those out when the books arrive there (we hope in December).
We are also offering this book to our distributors world-wide, though I don’t have any information on if they have agreed to carry it.
We are especially happy that the book can now be purchased in Wales, which is where John Brown was from and where he wrote this important little book.
My normal schtick on fixing up an old jack plane goes something like this:
Me (showing a jack plane to someone across the room): “Hey, does this sole look flat to you?”
Student: “Uh, I guess so?”
Me: “Then it’s ready to go to work.”
The above is a bit of hyperbole, but it is mostly true. Jack planes require the least amount of tuning to work really well. The reason? They take a coarse shaving, so the sole doesn’t have to be particularly flat for them to perform their duties. If you are in a hurry, you can usually grind and hone the iron and just go to work.
But I love my jack plane, and so I like to do a little work so that the controls move smoothly and the parts fit together nicely. If you think this is an admirable goal, read on.
A clean and oiled screw for the brass adjuster makes using the plane a much nicer experience.
Disassembly & Cleaning
Most jack planes have had a hard life and have had shavings and dust rammed into every possible orifice. A simple cleaning works wonders.
Take apart the entire plane. If something can be unscrewed, unscrew it. Remove the frog, the knob and tote. Unwind the blade-adjustment nut all the way (it likely will come off). Remove the screws that affix and adjust the frog.
Now fetch some cleaning tools. I use an old toothbrush, a coarse brass-bristle brush and some sort of liquid – Simple Green, mineral spirits, machine oil, WD-40 or anything else that is metal-friendly. Scrub the parts first with a toothbrush and solvent. Then use the brass-bristle brush (soaked with liquid) to clean the threads of every screw down to bare, shiny, lovely metal.
If the tapped holes in the plane are filled with gunk, clean those out with a bristled brush and some liquid. Bare metal is the goal.
Lubricate the screw threads with a light coat of machine oil.
Usually the frog isn’t much of a problem. But a little flattening doesn’t hurt. Here’s my progress after 5 seconds on #80 sandpaper.
Check the Frog
The frog of your jack plane is its heart. The bedding surface for the iron needs to be flat or perhaps slightly concave from end to end. If it is convex, the cutter might (or might not) chatter.
Before you get your panties in a wad about flattening the frog’s bedding surface, it’s important to understand what’s important about the cutter. Does the cutter need to be perfectly bedded on the entire iron? No. Does the cutter need to be bedded at two points on the frog? Not in my experience (though I used to think this was true). What’s important is that the cutter, chipbreaker and lever cap are all bedded tightly to the frog in the area right behind the mouth of the tool. If the cutter is secured there, you’re probably going to be OK, even if it’s not in full contact on the rest of the frog.
Lucky for us, the way a plane works helps ensure that cutter is firmly held exactly where it needs to be firmly held. The lever cap presses everything down at the right spot. So even if you have a crap-ish plane, you can tighten the grip of the lever cap to get the tool to work. The problem with that super-tighten-this strategy is that when the lever cap is really tight, you cannot adjust the position of the cutter. That is a pain.
My goal is to tune the plane so you can both easily adjust the cutting depth and the cutter won’t chatter. I have found that flattening the frog’s bedding surface helps me achieve my goal.
The completed frog surface.
Remove the screw in the middle of the frog (if you haven’t already). Rub the wide, flat surface of the frog on a diamond stone, coarse sharpening stone or some #80 paper stuck to a piece of granite. Flatten it as best you can (the lateral adjustment mechanism will get in the way of doing this easily). This is quick work – cast iron cuts quickly – and the work can only help the tool’s performance.
I can feel if the frog and back of the mouth are perfectly aligned on both sides of the mouth.
Attach the frog to the plane’s body. Position the frog so the tool’s mouth will be quite open. But don’t position the frog so far back that the plane iron cannot sit flat on the frog. For me, I position the frog so it is in the same plane as the back edge of the plane’s mouth. This position ensures that the iron will have free movement and will sit flat on the frog.
Tighten the frog’s screws tightly. Many people skip this step (by accident). Attach the the plane’s tote and front knob. Assemble the iron and chipbreaker. Secure them with the lever cap. Adjust the adjustment screw in the center of it all so that the cutter will move but is still held tightly.
So this is a little meta – I’m using a printout of this story to check the flatness of the plane’s sole. Copy paper is 3.5 thou thick. Not sure where my feeler gauges wandered off to.
Check the Sole
I hesitate to wade into this thicket. Does the sole have to be NASA flat to work? No. But if I had to choose a plane with a flat-ish sole or an unflat sole, I will choose the flatter sole every time. Bottom line: A little flattening doesn’t hurt. And it might help.
But before you rush out to buy some of the this, that or the other supplies for flattening a sole, give the sole a good gander. Here’s how.
You need a metal straightedge and feeler gauges. Retract the iron so it’s not in the way. Place the plane upside down in a bench vise and squeeze it just enough to hold it in place. Place the straightedge on the sole of the tool and try to fit a .002” gauge under the straightedge at various locations. Move the straightedge around.
After a few pokes with the feeler gauge, you will know what the sole looks like to a .002” feeler gauge.
Switch to a .004” feeler gauge and repeat the test. Then a .006”. Now stop. You now know where the low spots are on the plane’s sole. If you have low spots that a .006” feeler gauge can find (many planes do not) then you might consider flattening the sole a bit.
A 36″ length of marble threshold ($9 at the home center) is an excellent plate on which to affix your sandpaper.
Here’s how I do it. Please note, I am not a machinist or pretend to be.
Go to the home center with a nice straight steel 12” ruler and visit the tile section. Find a cheap pile of 12”-square granite tile (usually $4 or less), or a piece of granite threshold (about $9). Probe the pile and search for one tile that is flat. It won’t take long.
Go to the sandpaper section and buy some belt sander paper intended for stainless steel. Usually #80 grit is good. Go to the adhesive section and get some aerosol adhesive (3M makes some). Pay for it all.
At home, adhere the sandpaper to the tile. Now you can flatten plane soles so they are good enough for woodworking. Rub the sole on the sandpaper. Use circular and linear motions. Check your work with the straightedge and feeler gauges. You should be able to get the sole quite flat in less time than it takes to get a pizza delivered.
The sole after 15 seconds of flattening. It was pretty much dead flat to begin with.
Clean the sole with oil and a rag. You probably have some grit and crap inside the frog now. So take apart the whole tool, clean it and wait for my next installment on sharpening the iron and preparing the cap iron and chipbreaker.
Bevel the edges of your sole to make them stronger.
Beveling the edges of the sole is always a good idea for jack planes. They see some nasty knots, and the chamfer protects the edge of the sole from getting dinged up.
